The Complexity Of Language Acquisition Analyzed By Contrasting Theories

Children’s language development usually begins in their first three months. They will begin by learning to use their voice and enjoying vocal play. Babies will watch faces and mouths to try and copy movements and sounds.

All Human beings are born with a basic fundamental knowledge of the language and this progresses throughout their lifespan. Developmental psychologists research the developmental trajectory as this shows how the language, reasoning and social skill abilities develop.

Cognitive development in stage two of lifespan development correlates to shifts in infant’s thinking, reasoning, and use of language, problem solving, and learning. A child’s linguistic abilities develop swiftly around three years old. Then take into account by four years old, most toddlers are verbal intellectuals speaking in their native tongue proficiently (Dyer J., 2002a. pp. 87-92).

2-3 years children will be saying sentences and communicating successfully. Although they will still make mistakes with there grammar such as ; i eaten it, i drawed it.

All language theorists acknowledge nature and nurture both play significant roles in children’s language development. However, the theoretical debate to whether nature or nurture is the dominant tool during a child’s language

Nature and nurture both play a significant role in language development. Language development refers to how children understand, organise, speak and use words in order to communicate at an effective, age-appropriate level (Karen Kearns, 2013, P.105). For centuries, theorists have been debating the roles of nature versus nurture. Although, each child’s language will develop at their own pace and there will be many individual differences based on culture, ethnicity, health and ability. As well as physical, social, emotional and cognitive development in which will contribute to a child’s language development.

According to Hutchison (2015), around age four, children expand their vocabularies at an ever increasing rate and are able to incorporate new words into eight to ten word sentences, “but the most remarkable aspect of language development in early childhood is the understanding of grammar rules. By age four, young children in all cultures understand the basic grammar rules of their language. They accomplish this mostly by a figuring out process.

However, it can be argued with (Bruner 1964) that social interaction doesn’t explain all the complexities of language acquisition. Almost every day the language we hear is often incorrect, poorly defined, incomplete and full of hesitations, mispronunciations and other errors, and yet despite this we still learn to talk following the correct grammatical rules. Again this indicates the idea of Chomsky’s (1968) LAD model that children are born ‘hard-wired’ with the innate knowledge of linguistic rules and so these rules help the baby make estimations and presumptions about the language it is hearing. From these estimations and presumption the child can work out grammatical sets of rules and when more language is exposed to them, the more their language develops. Even within Chomsky’s (1968) LAD theory, undoubtedly he believed the role and promotion of the ‘nature’ aspect is the core foundation on which language can develop. But his theory also requires the role of nurture

Therefore, from the behaviourist approach, language acquisition can be seen as a stimulus-response process. Children learn language by immitation and analogy. The roles of imitation, repetition, reinforcement, and motivation are essential in learning the language. The First Language Acquisition is thus the result of nature which based on practicing.

Language is a communicative system of words and symbols unique to humans. The origins of language are still a mystery as fossil remains cannot speak. However, the rudiments of language can be inferred through studying linguistic development in children and the cognitive and communicative abilities of primates as discussed by Bridgeman (2003). This essay illustrates the skills infants have that will eventually help them to acquire language. The topics covered are firstly, the biological aspects, the contribution of the human brain to language development? Secondly, key theories of language development will be considered. Is the development innate? Is there a critical period? Thirdly, what must be learned? What are the rudiments infants must

Studies on the acquisition of language in children in general, and verb inflection in children in particular, indicate that children seem to have an easier time than adults in language development and that their acquisition of language is more error-free than is that of adults (Mayberry & Eichen 1991). Wexler (1998) also observes that children also acquire verbal placement and verbal inflection early and without errors even in the earliest observable stage of grammar acquisition which is around one year to 1 and half years.

The developmental stages of language are; pre-linguistic stage, one-word stage, two or three-word utterances, more complex sentences, further development between 3-4, and further development between 4 and 5. In the pre-linguistic stage from birth to 1 year, babies can tell the difference between voices and other sounds, they can start to use sounds such as ‘dadadadada’ or ‘mamamamama’. In the one-word stage from 12 to 18 months young children can have a variety of

Linguistics has impacted cognitive psychology as the quest to understand language acquisition and the structure of language itself is undertaken. Linguistics is a complex and multifaceted; it includes language structural patterns and language development (Barsalou, 2005). The process of language development is complicated and dense, as the study of language is examined; the role of cognition is inherently examined and analyzed. Sternberg (2006) also explores language as an innate process and presents the idea that humans are born ready for language as a biological and cognitive process.

The study of language acquisition in humans has long revolved around human cognition, the issue of what was innate and what was learned after humans were born is still an ongoing debate. The argument of language as an innate concept was inspired by Noah Chomsky’s “Language Acquisition Device” (cited in Bowerman 1993:329); in which he stated that every human was born with this and that it was responsible for the acquisition of language in early childhood. Many theories of language acquisition in children agreed that the development of conceptual knowledge, such as objects, actions and spatial relations, is the key attribute to language learning (Friedman & Seely 1976). There were several theories that linguists came up with, which explained the process of how children acquire meaning of words that they were exposed to; with association as the most prevalent attribute to language learning. Children often associate words with objects, learning these association by observing the adults (Meints, Plunkett, Harris & Dimmock 2002). The comprehension of spatial relations in children were believed to have formed even before children were able to produce spoken language. However there were only a few studies that had investigated how spatial relations actually form in children. The first part of this essay will further discuss the development of word meaning in children, specifically through a few theories of language acquisition, such as the Classic Abstraction Theory, the Missing

Abstract: In second language acquisition, age factors has always been the study focus and one of the most controversial issues of linguistics. Based on the Brain Plasticity Theory and the Critical Period Hypothesis, the purpose is to prove such a hypothesis that the younger the leaner who begins to learn an second language,the greater the probability that he or she will achieve a native-like command of it.